Creating a range of dates in Python

Question

I want to create a list of dates, starting with today, and going back an arbitrary number of days, say, in my example 100 days. Is there a better way to do it than this?

import datetime

a = datetime.datetime.today()
numdays = 100
dateList = []
for x in range (0, numdays):
    dateList.append(a - datetime.timedelta(days = x))
print dateList

Answer 1

You can write a generator function that returns date objects starting from today:

import datetime

def date_generator():
  from_date = datetime.datetime.today()
  while True:
    yield from_date
    from_date = from_date - datetime.timedelta(days=1)

This generator returns dates starting from today and going backwards one day at a time. Here is how to take the first 3 dates:

>>> import itertools
>>> dates = itertools.islice(date_generator(), 3)
>>> list(dates)
[datetime.datetime(2009, 6, 14, 19, 12, 21, 703890), datetime.datetime(2009, 6, 13, 19, 12, 21, 703890), datetime.datetime(2009, 6, 12, 19, 12, 21, 703890)]

The advantage of this approach over a loop or list comprehension is that you can go back as many times as you want.

Edit

A more compact version using a generator expression instead of a function:

date_generator = (datetime.datetime.today() - datetime.timedelta(days=i) for i in itertools.count())

Usage:

>>> dates = itertools.islice(date_generator, 3)
>>> list(dates)
[datetime.datetime(2009, 6, 15, 1, 32, 37, 286765), datetime.datetime(2009, 6, 14, 1, 32, 37, 286836), datetime.datetime(2009, 6, 13, 1, 32, 37, 286859)]

Answer 2

Marginally better...

base = datetime.datetime.today()
date_list = [base - datetime.timedelta(days=x) for x in range(0, numdays)]

Answer 3

import datetime    
def date_generator():
    cur = base = datetime.date.today()
    end  = base + datetime.timedelta(days=100)
    delta = datetime.timedelta(days=1)
    while(end>base):
        base = base+delta
        print base

date_generator()

Answer 4

Pandas is great for time series in general, and has direct support for date ranges.

For example pd.date_range():

import pandas as pd
datelist = pd.date_range(pd.datetime.today(), periods=100).tolist()

It also has lots of options to make life easier. For example if you only wanted weekdays, you would just swap in bdate_range.

See http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/timeseries.html#generating-ranges-of-timestamps

In addition it fully supports pytz timezones and can smoothly span spring/autumn DST shifts.

Answer 5

I know this has been answered, but I'll put down my answer for historical purposes, and since I think it is straight forward.

import numpy as np
import datetime as dt
listOfDates=[date for date in np.arange(firstDate,lastDate,dt.timedelta(days=x))]

Sure it won't win anything like code-golf, but I think it is elegant.

Answer 6

You can also use the day ordinal to make it simpler:

def date_range(start_date, end_date):
    for ordinal in range(start_date.toordinal(), end_date.toordinal()):
        yield datetime.date.fromordinal(ordinal)

Or as suggested in the comments you can create a list like this:

date_range = [
    datetime.date.fromordinal(ordinal) 
    for ordinal in range(
        start_date.toordinal(),
        end_date.toordinal(),
    )
]